Famous
West Virginians (N)

Last revision: May 24, 2015

Tony Nardo (1965- ) was a professional wrestler for the
WWF from 1985-88. He was trained by Dominick DeNucci, along side
Mick Foley (aka Cactus Jack Foley and Mankind). He wrestled
under several names but most notably as “Spot,” one half of the
tag team “The Moondogs.”
Tony was born in West Milford in Harrison County and attended
South Harrison High School. Photo at right: Nardo as Moondog Spot.

Steve Narick, bass player for the band Sleeping Giants,
is from Wheeling. The band, which is from West Liberty
College, has appeared on Late Night With Conan O’Brien.

John Forbes Nash Jr. (1928-2015), a mathematician who was
awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his landmark work,
first
begun in the 1950s, on the mathematics of game theory. He shared
the
Prize with Hungarian-American economist John C. Harsanyi and
German
mathematician Reinhard Selten. Nash began to experience what he
called
"mental disturbances" in 1959 and was involuntarily hospitalized
for a
time. A 1998 biography of Nash, A Beautiful Mind,
written by
Sylvia Nasar, describes Nash as a mathematical genius at
Princeton and
MIT who essentially lost 30 years of his life to paranoid
schizophrenia and who re-emerged into public glory once the
disease
was in remission to receive the Nobel prize for a brilliant
doctoral
dissertation he had done in 1950. Nash blamed his collapse on
the
mental effort of resolving contradictions in quantum theory. A
movie
with the same title was released in 2002. Nash was
born in Bluefield and grew up there.
He attended Wade Elementary School, Whitethorn Elementary
School,
Fairview Junior High School, and Beaver High School, from which
he graduated in 1945. While a senior in high school he
took supplementary math courses at Bluefield College.
Nash’s maternal grandfather, Dr. James Everett Martin, was an
early
settler in Bluefield, and served as its sixth mayor in 1896-97.

Earle "Greasy" Neale (1891-1973), football end and coach.
He
coached the Philadelphia Eagles from 1941 to 1950 and was
inducted
into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1969. He also played for
the
Cincinnati Reds around 1919. Neale was born in Parkersburg,
graduated
from Parkersburg High School and was once the head head football
coach at Parkersburg High School.

Julia Beckwith Neale (1789-1831) was the mother of
Stonewall
Jackson. She was born near Aldie in Loudoun County, Virginia.
After her first husband Jonathan Jackson died, she married Blake
B.
Woodson, an attorney who was appointed clerk of Fayette County.
The family lived in and around Ansted, where she is buried.

Matthew Mansfield Neely (1874-1958) was a U. S. Senator
and
Governor of West Virginia. As a Senator he was chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. For decades, he controlled the
state’s
Democratic "machine" and hand-picked candidates to receive the
party’s nomination for the state’s highest public offices. He
was
born in a log cabin near Grove in Doddridge County. In 1907 he
was
elected Mayor of Fairmont. Fairmont’s first radio station, WMMN,
is
named for him.

Don Nehlen (1936- ) was head football coach at WVU for 21
seasons, leading the team to a Division I-A National
Championship
football game in 1988.
He was National Coach of the Year in 1988, Big East Coach of the
Year
in 1993,
and President of the American Football Coaches Association in
1997.

Brett Nelson (1980- ) is a sophomore point guard on the
University
of Florida basketball team. He graduated from St. Albans High
School.
He has been
called the best player from West Virginia since Jerry West.

Thomas R. Nicely (1943- ), a professor of mathematics at
Lynchburg College in Virginia, made national news in 1994
when he discovered a bug in the numeric coprocessor of the
widely-used
Pentium
computer chip. He was born in Massachusetts but grew up
in Amherstdale in Logan County. He graduated from Man High
School
in 1959.

Dustin Nippert (1981- ), a pitcher for the Arizona
Diamondbacks in 2007, was born in Wheeling and attended WVU.

Jamie Noble is a member of the World Wrestling
Entertainment roster. The WWE web site reported in June 2002:
"Introduced by Nidia as her new boyfriend, Jamie Noble made his
presence felt when he attacked
The Hurricane on the June 6, 2002, episode of SmackDown!
Noble became a first-time WWE Cruiserweight Champion after
defeating
The Hurricane at King
of the Ring 2002, thanks to help from his girlfriend, Nidia."
His real name is James Gibson. His hometown is Hanover, West
Virginia.

Nick Nolte (1940- ) had a home in Charleston and was
formerly included in the list of famous West Virginians in the
World Almanac. Nolte was married to two West Virginians,
Sharyn Haddad and then Rebecca Linger. Rebecca’s father, Dr.
Thomas
Linger,
was a consultant on several of Nolte’s films. When he was
studying for Down
and Out
in Beverly Hills he is said to have hung out with
Charleston’s
eminent street person, Bill Dunn, known as Aqualung. In an
interview, Nolte said that to beef up for a role, he told the
director of the movie that he'd just go to West Virginia and
eat.
Nolte was born in Omaha.

John C. Norman is a distinguished surgeon and a pioneer
in
organ transplant techniques. He was born in Charleston.

Don Nottingham (1949- ) was a running back who played
for the Baltimore Colts and Miami Dolphins.
He was born in Widen, W. Va. He attended Ravenna High School in
Ravenna, Ohio, and played college football at Kent State
University.

David Nutter (1960- ) is an American television and film
director and television producer. He is best known for directing
pilot episodes for television series, being known as "the pilot
whisperer."
Nutter's big break came in 1993, when he began directing
episodes of The X-Files.
Nutter was born in Parkersburg and grew up in Vienna but later
moved to Florida.

Madison (Buzz) Nutter played professional football
with the Baltimore Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers. During his
many
years with the Colts he was center for Johnny Unitas. His
hometown is
Huntington.

Mayf Nutter (1941- ) has appeared in many TV series
including The Waltons, where he had a recurring role as
the
leader of a country and western band. He appeared in a 1984
episode
of Murder She Wrote and has appeared on The Whiz
Kids.
He earlier was a member of the New Christy Minstrels and had at
least
one hit record on the country charts on his own in the 1970s. He
was
born Mayfred Nutter Adamson in Bridgeport. He made his first
radio
appearance at age 12 on WPDX with local favorites Cherokee Sue
and Little John Graham.
Later, while in high school, he had a part-time job at WBOY-TV,
which had a program called the Big Boy Frolics.

Eldora Nuzum

Eldora Marie Bolyard Nuzum (1926-2004), the first female
editor of a daily newspaper in West Virginia,
was named the managing editor of the Grafton Sentinel,
then a daily, in 1946.
She subsequently was the editor of the Inter Mountain,
a daily in Elkins, for more than 30 years. She was married to
Circuit Judge Jack Robert Nuzum,
who served in the House of Delegates from Taylor and Randolph
Counties.
She was born in Grafton.